Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts ed. by Mary Ellen Lamb, Karen Bamford

440 RHETORICA visivamente in maniera efficace, mediante il frequente accostamento dei testi su due colonne afffiançate. Il volume è rivolto in egual misura a studiosi di retorica e medievisti: i primi apprezzeranno l'ampio spazio dedicato al ruolo svolto dal trattato nella storia dell'ars dictaminis e ai rapporti intrattenuti con la tradizione retorica precedente nonché il piglio técnico e specialistico che caratterizza l'illustrazione delle problematiche principali proprie del genere; per i secondi risulterà intéressante la ricostruzione delle dinamiche culturali dell'ambito cassinese, lo studio del riutilizzo delle fonti e il confronto testuale con autori del tempo. In ogni caso il volume di B., grazie alla mole di informazioni fornite nei Prolegomena e nelle note, si profila come uno strumento indispensabile e imprescindibile per lo studio della retorica epistolare medievale, ma anche per quello più generale della figura di Alberico di Montecassino. Non resta che auspicare, per un testo che ne è ancora privo, una traduzione italiana, che potrebbe risultare utile per chi si accosti a quest'opera con interessi non legati esclusivamente alia storia della retorica o del Medioevo. Vera Tufano University di Napoli Federico II Mary Ellen Lamb and Karen Bamford, eds, Oral Traditions and Gender in Early Modern Literary Texts. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008. 250 pp. ISBN 978-0-7546-5538-1 As its title suggests, this collection of essays includes a wide range of approaches, some distinctly literary, others verging on the sociological. It is divided into three parts. Part I, /z'Our Mothers' Maids': Nurture and Narrative," comprises four essays, Part II, "Spinsters and Knitters in the Sun," five, and Part III, "Oral Traditions and Masculinity," again five. The Introduction, by one of the editors, Mary Ellen Lamb, follows a list of brief biographies of the contributors. The Afterword is by Pamela Allen Brown. The work has a useful bibliography and a satisfactory index. The frontispiece, reproduced on page 86, is from Richard Braithwait's "Art Asleepe, Husband? A Boulster Lecture" published in London in 1588. Pages 122 and 123 show illustrations of the criers of London from the late sixteenth century, one from a woodcut and the other from an engraving. The contributors include some who are already leaders in their field and some very promising younger scholars. Most of the contributors hold po­ sitions at universities in the United States, though one is at Oxford and one at Groningen in The Netherlands. Canadian universities are well represented, with contributions from Mount Allison, Waterloo, and Guelph. A persistent consideration for those of us who work with the texts of the past is the question of how far modern theories can illuminate the practice Reviews 441 of earlier times. Although some modern theories can indeed suggest useful ways of approaching the literature of the past, there is still the ever-present danger of the kind of anachronism that treats the values of our own times as normative. Some of the essays in this collection seem to me to fall into this trap: these are for the most part exercises in misguided ingenuity, neither illuminating the texts themselves, nor establishing the usefulness of the theory. Yet some contributors use modern theory to very good effect, notably Eric Mason, whose use of Derrida's theory I shall discuss below. Many of the essays discuss classic literary texts: there are three on works by Edmund Spenser and three on plays by Shakespeare. However, some deal with texts much less generally familiar, and many of the most interesting essays are on topics closer to popular culture or social history. Notable here are two essays in Part II: Fiona McNeill's "Free and Bound Maids: Women's Work Songs and Industrial Change in the Age of Shakespeare," and Natasha Korda's "Gender at Work in the Cries of London." It is especially encouraging to see discussions of the importance of music, both in these essays and in "'When an Old Ballad is Plainly Sung': Musical Lyrics in the Plays of Margaret and William Cavendish" by James Fitzmaurice. Demonstrating as it does the importance of pathos, the use of music and also the musical element in oral discourse should be of particular interest to rhetoricians. It is impossible, given...

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